


Immortality

by autonomousquill



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 02:31:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8185816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autonomousquill/pseuds/autonomousquill
Summary: James and Sirius have a brief moment of calm amidst the chaos of war.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the inkstay prompt: immortality.

october, 1978

They sat with their backs to the brick wall, bored by the semi-darkness. Sirius, with his scuffed boots and bristly face, had a cigarette hanging casually from his mouth. James had never taken to the Muggle habit, but Sirius loved it. It was probably just to spite his family — doing things that would make his mother turn purple with rage was still one of his favourite pastimes.

‘Think we’ll actually see anything useful tonight?’ Sirius asked him.

For three days they’d been coming to this spot, staked out for information. Dumbledore hadn’t actually asked them himself, but if the Order wanted you to do it, you did it.

Even if nothing actually happened.

‘I dunno, I thought that couple getting off last night was pretty useful,’ he smirked. Sirius simply laughed, a bark that rang through the still evening air.

They’d been young, caught up in the moment, hidden by the darkness. Of course, they hadn’t spotted James and Sirius, sitting in the shadows nearby.

James remembered the couple, snogging as if their lives depended on it, and his thoughts drifted back to Lily, as they so often did these days. They, too, would snog as if their lives depended on it, and much more besides, but they’d been out of Hogwarts barely a month before James had proposed to her. He knew it was a decision he would never regret, not for as long as he lived, but it still worried him.

‘Do you think… we’re going too fast?’ Sirius raised an eyebrow, and he elaborated. ‘Getting married.’

‘Why, young Master Prongs,’ said Sirius, putting on his loftiest aristocratic impression, ‘one can’t worry about living life too fast, it’s about the quality.’

‘I’m serious, Pads.’

‘And I’m serious too. The Death Eaters could blow us up right now - you love Lily, she loves you. What’s the point of waiting for war to pass?’ He dropped his cigarette and ground it into the pavement with his boot. ‘Who wants to live forever anyway? I certainly don’t - I’ll end up like my dear old hag mother. Actually, she might have dropped off already, that would’ve done everyone a favour.’

James had gotten used to Sirius’ devil-may-care attitude after seven years of school, but it was only after they’d left Hogwarts that he’d developed a taste for nihilism. After they’d left the safety of the castle walls and entered the real world. The war.

But Sirius wasn’t the only one who had changed. This was not the conversation of school-children, after all.

‘No one’s immortal. Not even you, James Potter.’

He believed it, too.


End file.
